Release: Amazon EC2 on 2011-12-01

This release of Amazon EC2 introduced new choices of Reserved Instance offerings that address different projected uses of instances.

Release Date: December 01, 2011
Latest Version: 2011-11-01
Created On: December 02, 2011
Last Updated: October 09, 2017

New Features

Feature Description
New Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Offerings With this release, we introduced two new Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance offerings. Starting with API version 2011-11-01, you can choose from a variety of Reserved Instance offerings that address your projected use of the instance: Heavy Utilization, Medium Utilization (the traditional Reserved Instance offering), and Light Utilization.

Heavy Utilization is the choice with the lowest overall cost if you plan to utilize your Reserved Instances more than 79 percent of a 3-year term. Medium Utilization is suitable when you expect moderate usage, more than 40 percent of a 3-year term. Light Utilization is the option with lowest overall cost if you anticipate using your Reserved Instances infrequently, more than about 15 percent of a 3-year term.

As part of this launch, you will see:

If you are using tools that predate this release of the 2011-11-01 API version, DescribeReservedInstancesOfferings and ec2-describe-reserved-instances-offerings will only list information about the Medium Utilization Reserved Instance offering type.

After you upgrade your tools to an API version of 2011-11-01 or later, you will find additional parameters returned from the DescribeReservedInstancesOfferings and DescribeReservedInstances API actions, including:

  • offeringType—Identifies the Reserved Instance offering based on projected utilization of an instance.
  • recurringCharges—Dictates how frequently you'll be charged at a specific rate. This flag only applies to Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances.

It is important that you update your code if you want to consider the one-time fee, recurring charges, and usage charges when selecting the Reserved Instance you want to purchase. For more information, see DescribeReservedInstancesOfferings and DescribeReservedInstances.